DISCUSSION TEXT infected by bias.

If they are right then it may be a short step to skepticism,

the denial that we can have knowledge at all, or, at least, know that we have
it. The view in question is "social constructionism," a view that typically
The Problem of Evil stresses the operation of non-rational factors in the "construction" of
knowledge. One has only to think a little about how ones beliefs may be
Summary: The argument from evil is one of the oldest, and most stubborn affected by ones race, gender, economic status, or by individual vices, such
problems surrounding the notion of God: how can an all-good, all-powerful, as greed or the desire for prestige, to realize how even socially approved
and all-knowing God permit suffering in the world? Fyodor Dostoevsky claims to knowledge may be unjustified. Code for example tries to show how
highlights an array of evils that we might expect God to prevent, such as gender can influence our beliefs about how best to acquire knowledge. Kuhn
cruelty to animals and cruelty to children. Even if God punished the argues that even in the "hard" sciences social factors, such as peer approval,
offenders, he suggests, this would not remove the problem: God should have or community-approved ways of seeing the world, affect notions of what
prevented these acts of cruelty to begin with. John L. Mackie argues that constitutes scientific knowledge. On the other hand the findings of the hard
belief in an all good and all powerful God is logically inconsistent with the sciences, or even such moral beliefs as that it is wrong to torture people for
fact of suffering in the world. Traditional solutions to the problem, he argues, fun, certainly seem to many people to be objectively true. Such beliefs may
such as the free will defense, fail. The only real solution is to deny God's in fact be arrived at by processes that deliberately screen for prejudice and
goodness, or power, or his existence altogether. Against Mackie's position, other irrational factors, as Sokal has argued.
William L. Rowe argues that the presence of suffering is not logically
inconsistent with the existence of an all good and powerful God. The
Reason and Moral Judgments
problem, according to Rowe, is that we can't assume that an omnipotent,
wholly good being will prevent the occurrence of any evil whatever. That is,
at least some evils seem justifiable, and this blocks the charge of logical Summary: Like the issue of selflessness, the question of the role of reason in
inconsistency. John Hick offers a unique solution to the problem of evil: morality has to do with the source of moral assessments within human
human creation is a developmental process during which time we evolve to thought. One extreme position is that morality involves our emotions, with
eventually become a more perfect likeness of God. Suffering, then, is just no role for reason. A contrasting position, equally extreme, is that morality is
part of the developmental process of creation. purely a matter of rational judgment, with no role for emotions. Hume
represents the first view and argues that moral assessments are nothing but
emotional reactions. His view is represented in the statement that "ought
identity and Survival cannot be derived from is" - that is, statements of fact can never lead to
moral assessments. Contrary to Hume, Searle argues that if we begin with
Summary: Are we deluded in thinking that we have some core self, a soul, statements of institutional facts - facts about social rules and expectations -
spirit or mind, which stays the "same" throughout change? Hume and other we can indeed arrive at statements of obligation. Following Hume, Ayer
skeptics think so. But the skeptical position runs up against some of our holds that moral assessments are emotional and not rational judgments.
strongest intuitions, just as does determinism. Perhaps Hume simply Ayer argues more particularly that moral judgments express feelings
confuses specific and numerical identity. Two things, A and B, are specifically (emotivism) and are used to recommend that others adopt our attitudes
identical if they have all or almost all the same traits. In that sense, I am (prescriptivism). Baier takes the reverse side of the dispute and argues that
clearly not identical with myself as I was ten years ago. My body has changed moral assessments are not emotional reactions but instead involve surveying
drastically. My "mind" has changed a lot too. My opinions have changed and the relevant facts and weighing those facts in order to arrive at the best
so have some of my mental habits. But in the numerical sense of identity A reasons for acting one way rather than another.
and B are identical if they are the same thing, however many changes that
thing has undergone. There is one Niagara Falls; although it keeps changing,
. Sources of Political Authority
it is still Niagara Falls and not some numerically distinct waterfall. Although
the notion of numerical identity is not without problems, it does not have
the problems that specific identity has. Or perhaps Hume and other skeptics Summary: During the 17th century, philosophers formulated several theories
assume that if there is going to be personal identity through time, it will have of political authority, which have impacted views of the subject down to
to be rooted in mental life, rather than physical life. Yet bodily criteria might present times. According to Pufendorf, moral duty and political authority are
suffice for personal identity. My body is numerically the same as it was ten both grounded in natural law. The main principle of natural law, as authored
years ago. No other body has taken over. In any case, it is not obvious what and mandated by God, is that we should be sociable. We construct civil
sense there is in the notion that my identity persists through death. Perhaps governments as a means of having a suitable environment in which we can
the notion that it does sits better with the idea that identity is a bodily follow natural law. Hobbes defended social contract theory, which is the
matter, than with the idea that it is a mental or "soul" matter. view that, to secure our survival, we mutually agree to set aside our
hostilities and establish a government to assure that we abide by our
agreements. Without this agreement, we will be in a constant state of war,
20th Century views on Mind and Body each of us selfishly battling it out in competition for a limited supply of
necessities. For Hobbes, the transition from a state of war to a state of peace
Summary: The tone for much discussion, over the last 400 years, of the is facilitated by following laws of nature. The three most important laws are,
nature of mind and body was certainly set by Descartes. Cartesian dualism first, to seek peace as a means of self-preservation, second, to mutually
postulated an apparently unbridgeable gap between minds and bodies which divest ourselves of hostile rights, and, third, to keep the agreements that we
drove some thinkers to materialism, others to idealism. 20th century thinkers make. Locke defended a view of natural rights: God has invested all people
have developed sophisticated versions of materialism, aided by recent with fundamental rights to life, health, liberty and possessions. We retain
discoveries about the nervous systems and the brain. Some 20 th century our right to life unless we forfeit it by violating the rights of others. We
materialists have argued that mental states are identical with states of the create private property when we mix our labor with an object held in
brain, or reducible to them, in a way analogous to the way clouds are common. We form larger communities for the benefit of mutual protection,
"reducible" to water droplets, or nations to individual citizens. Others have but in exchange for this we give up some of our liberty.
argued for the possibility of eliminating all references to thoughts and other
mental notions in a completed account of the brain. Yet other thinkers have
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thought that Descartes was conceptually confused. One of the most
powerful accounts of mental states and acts developed in recent years is
functionalism. Perhaps such mental "things" as thoughts, or fears, or beliefs,
are nothing more than names for the way in which certain purely physical
things function. Functionalism is compatible with materialism, though it does
not entail it in the way that identity theory or eliminative materialism does.

The Social Construction of Knowledge

Summary: Few things are more obvious then the fact that some knowledge
claims are the result of prejudice, an "agenda" of some sort, or a limited
perspective. But in recent years some thinkers have argued that all
knowledge claims, or most of them, are infected by such factors. They point
out that the very language that we use to articulate our thought may be